Kharge asks why PM not listening to Opposition demands
NEW DELHI: Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not responding to the issues raised by the Opposition. Referring to Modi’s speech in the Rajya Sabha, Kharge said he doesn’t have courage to answer the questions posed by Rahul Gandhi and alleged that the PM lacks vision and ideology.
The Congress leader said that his morale is broken following revelations in Gen MM Naravane’s memoirs and Epstein files and he is scared of Gandhi. “Repeating falsehoods” has been Modi’s job and in his 97-minute reply to the discussion on the motion of thanks to the President’s address, he didn’t say anything important, Kharge said. “He (PM) just kept talking about 100 years... 75 years... 50 years…When we got hold of Naravane’s book, how could those in power not have it? They are saying in Parliament that the book hasn’t even been published yet…but the reality is that the book does exist,” the Congress president told media persons.
Kharge also hit out at the PM for trying to distort the facts about the verbal exchange between Gandhi and BJP MP Ravneet Singh Bittu. Rejecting the PM’s charge that Congress insulted Sikhs, he said the Congress had appointed Manmohan Singh as the first Sikh PM of the country.
Taking a dig at Modi for not replying to the discussion on the motion in the Lok Sabha, Kharge said, “The Speaker said intelligence was received, so he advised Modi ji not to respond to the President’s address in the Lok Sabha. If your intelligence is so good, where was it during terrorist attacks like Pulwama?”